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Sandown, Isle of Wight. |
27 November 2008 08:45 |
Just uploaded this large house in Sandown priced at £365,000. |
Its in a good location – it’s an easy walk to the Beach , (just down the hill) & yet easy to get to the mainland (or Shanklin or Ryde) as the Railway station is only a short walk away.
Have a good day
Simon
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What about some good news? |
25 November 2008 09:55 |
Over the last few weeks, our clients increasingly tell us that as all the News is bad, they have given up viewing any News! |
After the Chancellors “mini” Budget yesterday I thought it was all summarized in the Torygraph’s cartoon below
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Wacky houses on Guardian website |
18 November 2008 10:57 |
We have just been speaking to someone within the Guardian who is responsible for showing various properties within the UK.
We are hoping to have one of ours shown in the next few days – details to follow later. |
Whilst perusing the Guardian site I found this page of “Wacky Houses” (click on Purple arrows when they appear).
The picture depicts an old gatehouse to a manor house. (Picture by A.Grant Agents see Guardian website)
Have a good day
Simon
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E-mail just in from a potential buyer re the Isle of Wight |
12 November 2008 13:57 |
We try our hardest to produce the best details - with the largest floorplans & good quality photographs, its great our efforts are appreciated - see e-mail just in below. |
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If only Gordon had lifted the stamp duty in this price range! We could move in tomorrow. He seems to have greased the wheels at the rear of the train, Stupid man!
Please keep us informed as to what’s happening with this property, as we may well come up with a solution in the very near future.
……………………… your presentation and excellent photo's have played a big part in our choice.
Yours sincerely
K&B L
12.11.08
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New announcements expected soon on HIPs |
12 November 2008 12:00 |
A really interesting article below – lets hope they scrap the HIP!
Simon |
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Major announcements on Home Information Packs and personal searches are expected imminently, amid predictions this week from one of the UK’s biggest suppliers that HIPs will die the death unless there are major changes.
A stakeholder meeting with Communities and Local Government was held on November 4, where participants were told that outcomes would be notified within ten days.
It is understood the announcements will centre around the exemptions that are due to end of December 31.
Currently, exemptions include allowing first day marketing to commence without a HIP in place, provided the documentation has been ordered. Regulations currently say that from January 1 onwards, a property can be marketed as long as documents that can be obtained within 48 hours are in place, as long as the remainder are ordered. Although Estate Agent Today has highlighted this minor change, there has been considerable anxiety in the industry that no properties can be marketed until all documentation is received.
Other exemptions due to end relate to the documentation required on leasehold properties and the use of insurance by personal search firms to cover incomplete answers.
David Kempster, marketing manager for MDA, parent company of HIP provider MDA Advantage, and search specialists SearchFlow and Richards Gray, said: “The announcement is likely to have a huge effect on the personal search industry. My belief is that the insurance exemption – which means personal search firms can insure against missing information – will be extended to April to ensure that, once and for all, local authorities are ready.
“The Ministry of Justice is sure to introduce an increase in the access fee chargeable by local authorities for personal search data. It has been fixed at the artificially low level of £11 for far too long and is set for a significant hike to better reflect the costs of maintaining the information.
“It all means that personal search firms will have to seriously consider over a three-month period how they operate. For one thing, the gap between fees charged for official searches and personal searches will narrow. Secondly, personal searches, even with insurance, are still not widely trusted by the buyer’s solicitors.
“Effectively, for HIP content, it means that personal search firms will have to decide to go one of two routes.
“The ones that have a ‘derived data’ model, taken from databases and without anyone going into a local council office, will have difficulties because they need to offer insurance.
“The traditional ‘shoe leather’ route may, quite simply, prove too expensive or that the market has to accept these searches will necessarily become more expensive to administer if full information is to be provided – and therefore in a HIP to be compliant. Another challenge is that it can only be a matter of time before all local authorities make their official search information available online.”
Kempster added: “I realise you would not expect me to be saying this. However, it is true. The time has come for the search industry to change, and I believe HIPs must also change within 18 months or die, regardless of which political party gets in at the next election.
“To have a longer shelf life than 18 months, they need to provide better, more pertinent information, be a real aid to consumers and prevent duplication of legal work, including duplication of searches. In short, HIPs need to become more useful by having complete information acceptable to all. This means a realisation that you cannot supply full and accurate searches ever cheaper using traditional methods.
“At the moment, HIP providers generally are cutting their prices, but this is not the way to go. The debate has to be about exchange-ready HIPs, but industry and professional bodies have to stop talking and agree an acceptable format to go forward with.”
Asked about widespread accusations that the property search and HIPs compliance codes are toothless, Kempster agreed that both need policing properly.
He said: “In particular, we are anxious to know which firms were involved in the recent Birmingham case, where Trading Standard officers looking at a sample of HIPs and found that five out of six were deficient because of the search content. One of the searches even described a property as being in the wrong county.”
Kempster said MDA, like other HIP providers, has had a bruising time this year. It has cut jobs through redundancies, natural wastage and redeployment.
The rapid deterioration in the market meant that after acquiring personal search provider Richards Gray in February, the company had to announce only months later, in June, that it was closing Richards Gray’s Berkshire office, shedding jobs, and amalgamating operations. It has, however, kept the Cardiff office of Richards Gray open for search and HIP production and consolidated other functions for Richards Gray, SearchFlow and MDA Advantage, MDA’s existing HIP company, at their offices in Kent.
Nor has the HIPs model quite turned out as predicted: “Legal firms are packaging their own HIPs, so we have provided both an off the shelf packaged solution, as well as individual ingredients. There has also been an obvious trend for sellers to commission their own HIP via a local solicitor, rather than go through agents.”
MDA’s Canadian parent company recently warned on profits mainly due to the UK housing and HIPs market. In the UK and Europe, Mark Riddick has left the top position, to be replaced by Stuart Pearce. He founded PSA in 1983, which jump-started the entire personal search industry and later became SearchFlow, connecting local authorities to conveyancers and becoming the overall market leader for a wide range of property searches.”
EAT Wednesday 12.11.08
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Seaview, Isle of Wight. |
08 November 2008 10:54 |
Just uploaded this smashing house priced at £1.25 million. |
This house has nice regular room sizes & lots of them! A real bonus is that the wooden shutters work, (so many have been pulled out over the years) & so you don’t need curtains & it keeps the rooms warmer in the winter as there is less heat loss. The additional large woodland garden which was purchased a few years ago is a real bonus, leading straight from the gravelled area. And of course the main pull is the Beach/Sea that is just across the road – we often walk along this beach to Seaview & then around the point to St Helens (low tide only), or sometimes in the other direction to Ryde Town.
Have a great weekend Simon
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Government buried bad HIP’s news |
06 November 2008 09:16 |
The sooner HIP’s are scraped the better, we have never made any money from Hip’s, but a lot of agents do get extra commission, on the mainland anything up to £300 per HIP!
We can give you a list of HIP & EPC providers on the Isle of Wight for your home – we get no commission at all & you get the cheapest deal, currently £240 NO VAT & EPC is £60 NO VAT
Simon |
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Labour ministers have been accused of trying to bury bad news about Home Information Packs after damning research was quietly published just before the weekend last Friday afternoon.
The report, published by Communities and Local Government, includes the key findings that both buyers and sellers say the cost of a HIP is not balanced out by its benefits, and that HIPs have made buying and selling more complicated.
The media was not alerted to the report, snappily called ‘Home Information Packs, Consumer Focus Group: Qualitative Research Summary Findings’. No press release was issued.
While the research by Ipsos MORI has been conducted independently for CLG, the department appears to be distancing itself from the findings.
CLG makes it clear: “The findings in this report are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the Department for Communities and Local Government.” CLG also stresses that qualitative research “should not be interpreted as definitive or statistically representative” and says it does not provide “robust evidence”.
CLG has been given the opportunity to say why the press was not alerted to the report, and Estate Agent Today will update this story if we get a response.
The report is based on 12 focus groups – two each in Stockport, Nottingham, Cardiff, Maidenhead, Birmingham and London – consisting of a total of 102 people. These included buyers – among them first-time buyers – and sellers.
They were questioned about the advantages and disadvantages of HIPs.
Advantages were that HIPs were considered a step in the right direction and made for greater commitment, meaning that sales were less likely to fall through.
But disadvantages were that HIPs were not value for money; contained too much jargon and legalese; did not give information that could have been useful (such as the structure of the building, Building Regulations and local amenities); some sellers had had to pay for additional searches; Evidence of Title was considered unnecessary as it could be so quickly obtained from the Land Registry; and none of the participants had acted on the recommendations in the Energy Performance Certificate.
Sellers protested that they struggled “to see the purpose of paying for something that received low levels of interest from buyers”.
There was also confusion as to whether HIPs could be transferred when sellers went from one estate agent to another, and buyers said they didn’t take into account the EPC when making a purchasing decision. Many buyers also said they did not see the HIP until after they had made an offer. However, the report notes that the timing of buyers seeing the HIP depended on the estate agent. Some agents did not know whether they were allowed to show HIPs to purchasers, says the report.
But the most crucial sentence is: “Both buyers and sellers agreed that the additional cost involved in acquiring a HIP was not sufficiently balanced out by its benefits. A large proportion of participants stated that the implementation of HIPs made buying and selling more complicated, but this opinion was not supported by personal experience.”
This last phrase “but this opinion was not supported by personal experience” is not fully explained, although the report is only the summary findings.
The focus groups met between February 26 and March 6. Having taken almost eight months to publish the summary, it is not known when, or if, the full findings will be published.
According to the Tories, the research “exposes consumer confusion, apathy and resentment”. Shadow housing minister Grant Shapps said: “Labour are back to their old tricks of trying to bury bad news. Their own research admits that the people think Home Information Packs are a waste of time and money. The public don’t trust the paper these Packs are written on.”
He said: “Conservatives will scrap this red tape, and the Government should use their power immediately to suspend the requirement to buy a Pack to help the beleaguered housing market. I fear that Labour ministers are more interested in saving face than saving people money.”
See www.communities.gov.uk/publications/housing/consumerqualitativeresearch
EAT 5.11.08
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Thatched cottage on the Isle of Wight. |
05 November 2008 16:06 |
I have just uploaded another cottage in Bembridge priced at £300,000 (pictured on the right)
As it happens we also have the adjoining thatched cottage on our books (pictured on the left) priced at £250,000. |
We are the only agents who have both properties so if you are interested in either, or both, please do contact us – it would make a huge thatched cottage if you bought both for £550,000!
Simon
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Maisonette in Totland Bay, Isle of Wight. |
05 November 2008 11:06 |
Just uploaded this maisonette in Totland Bay – most unusual, it’s the only one that has its own garden, & has a view (glimpse) right across the Solent to the mainland - most unexpected!
We had a house exchange contracts yesterday, so things are still ticking over.
We should be on the new PROPERTY LIVE website within the next few days – a real threat to Rightmove.
Simon |
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